2008 Annual Report - NASA Airborne Science Program

where you couldn’t find them, and were
vulnerable to being raided by other OSSA
programs without notification, which they were.
John worked the agency and congressional
committees to establish a unique budget line
item, UPN 640, which was annually funded
as a stand-alone congressional line item and
could not be raided by others. I think it was
established about FY67, but can’t remember
exactly.
Kouts left the Agency sometime in 1970, as
I remember, and moved on to the Las Vegas
office of the newly formed EPA. Here Kouts
started an EPA aircraft remote sensing program
for enforcement purposes. At this time, Barney
Nolan became the Headquarters’ Program
Manager for the Aircraft Program. Barney
had served in the USAF in WWII and flew
“left seat” as an active pilot in the 8th Bomber
Command in Europe, which is enough right
there to get anyone’s respect. Barney and I
had an excellent relationship, and he was a
good manager. This meant that he kept the
budget supported, sent us money, kept the
Headquarters demons off, and left us alone to
do our job. He remained in that capacity until
1978. We remain friends to this day.
The flight program started with relatively
minor flight activity utilizing the CV 240, and
increased in 1967 with the addition of the P-
3A, and again in 1969 with the first missions of
the WB-57 and the C-130. The CV 240 was
phased out in August of 1969 due to advancing
obsolescence, limited range (due to the weight
of the required sensor complements), and
changing program mission requirements.
Earth Observations Aircraft Program activities
were conducted in close cooperation with
participating governmental agencies, which
had extensive research programs and
responsibilities in their particular scientific
disciplines. These agencies were known
as “user-agencies,” referring to their use
of earth resources data applied to their
areas of responsibility. The role of the
user agencies in the aircraft program
extended to their direct participation in the
formulation and execution of the program
activities. In general, all geographic areas
chosen for study were selected by these
investigators. The agencies, in general,
funded their own manpower, civil service
and contractor. NASA provided the aircraft
data acquisition and processing funding.
The early participants in the program
included university, civilian governmental
agencies, and the U.S. Navy. This was
later expanded to include international
participation. The universities were funded
by OSSA to provide scientific discipline,
sensor technology and unique software
expertise, as well as sponsoring earth
looking science investigations. Thus, the
applications portion of OSSA initiated
the institutional foundation of the earth
observations remote sensing program
in the United States and was enabling
for the development of the satellitesensing
program as we know it today. The
sensor and discipline teams, funded by
OSSA, worked together to assure that
sensor data outputs, spectral and spatial,
were correlated to discipline needs. The
discipline teams were organized along
traditional lines such as agriculture/forestry,
oceanography, hydrology, and geography.
There were counterpart scientists within
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